How To Change Your Life

How to change your life'Corporate executives work hard. Peasant organisers work hard. So must we…'One activist's answer to the perennial question 'What can I do?' But hard work is not everything. The Institute for Food and Development Policy* discovered six important lessons shared by people working for change.

1. BEGIN WHERE YOU ARE Ask what you can do now. Play the hand you are dealt.

2. LEARN HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES Anger can be important. If you are fighting someone else's oppression and inequality, find out what it feels like.

3. BE SELF-CRITICAL Action and analysis must got together. Think what you are doing and be prepared to admit when you are wrong.

4. DO NOT BURN YOURSELF OUT Strike a balance between work and play. Don't be guilty about taking time out to enjoy yourself.

5. BELIEVE IN CHANGE Do not protect yourself from uncertainty. Periodic loneliness and self-doubt are facts of a changing life.

6. ASK A BIG ENOUGH QUESTION "If you expect to see the final results of your work you have not asked a big enough question." I.F. Stone.

* What can we do? A Food, Land, Hunger Action Guideby William Valentine and Frances Mooore Lappe, IFDP, 1980.

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